Penticton blanked on RDOS boards

Dear editor: Re: Oliver councillor to head hospital district, (Herald, A1, Nov. 16).

Penticton, paying 40 per cent of the Regional District Okanagan Similkameen budget, has been shut out of any meaningful representation on the RDOS and hospital boards.

Petra Veintimilla of Oliver and Toni Boot, the mayor of Summerland, were elected to the hospital board by secret vote of the RDOS members.

Why secret? The RDOS likes secrecy. It is very hard for taxpayers to keep track of what is happening on the RDOS.

In Penticton for example you can go to the city website and watch a broadcast of any council meeting live or if that is not convenient watch it later or examine the archive of previous meetings.

If there is any particular item you are interested in you can go directly to that section of the council meeting to get the information you are looking for. Penticton has a population in the mid-30,000s.

Contrast this to the RDOS: The RDOS, which provides services to about 83,000 people, is the only local government in the South Okanagan that doesn’t make audio or video available from its meetings. (Herald, Sept. 6, 2018)

Estimates said that the expense would be $35,000, last term’s RDOS directors apparently saw no value in allowing taxpayers to watch their decision-making process.

Let us hope that this term’s directors show more responsibility towards the taxpayers’ right to know what they are doing and how they are behaving.

The RDOS appoints two people to the Okanagan Similkameen Regional Hospital District. Petra Veintimilla was appointed by Oliver council to represent them on the RDOS. Her passionate interest makes her a good candidate for the hospital board; apparently overriding her lack of RDOS experience.

Frank Regehr, who waltzed into third place in Penticton’s council race behind former mayor Jake Kimberley and whiz kid Campbell Watt, was shut out by secret ballot. Regehr is the financial guru of Penticton’s new council. Seems like poor-decision-making to me. Apparently Petra Veintimilla can handle being a first-timer to the RDOS board and sit on the prestigious hospital board all in one go but Penticton’s councillors abilities are suspect.

Naramata’s RDOS Chair Karla Kozakevich obviously knows more than we about our council’s abilities.

Looks like we screwed up again guys! But I am sure we can count on Karla and the RDOS board members to set us straight. Elvena Slump Penticton the story as told doesn’t stand up to intelligent enquiry. We are told that Adam and Eve were the only people in the world. They had no daughters but two sons, Cain and Abel, who went on to produce children of their own with other women. If there were no other people in the world, where did these women come from?

The story was, of course, invented to communicate the principle of sin. Brian Butler

Penticton